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Priest protest in Belarus: "The powerful violate God's laws"

2020-09-25T10:26:50.241Z


The demonstration against Alexander Lukashenko continues in Belarus. How are the churches responding to the conflict? About drooling nuns, level-headed priests and a very power-conscious clerical elite.


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Priests at an opposition demonstration in Minsk

Photo: VASILY FEDOSENKO / REUTERS

On Friday the Orthodox priest Vladimir Drobyshevsky from Gomel, Belarus, was sentenced to ten days in prison.

The reason?

He had held up a poster on the sidelines of an anti-government demonstration, on it a portrait of Isaac Newton with the formula of the law of interaction: "Every action produces an equally large reaction."

That was enough to put the father of six behind bars.

But not only the state power took action against the clergy: the church leadership had already dismissed Drobyshevsky from all offices at the beginning of August.

The Russian Orthodox Church in Belarus is traditionally just as pro-government as its big sister in the East, to which it is subordinate.

Although the official policy of non-interference is in place, clergymen have repeatedly been instrumentalized by the Lukashenko government for his agenda.

For example, the head of a women's monastery, Abbess Gavrila, declared at a government propaganda event in Minsk that the demonstrators were sectarians, "a frenzied, diabolically roaring flock" for whom one should pray.

"You madmen, stop!" She shouted into the applauding crowd.

The interweaving of the state and Orthodox leadership is not only ideological and political in nature: "The simple priests have no material interests, it is the higher clergy who have extensive ties to government and business and do not intend to give up power," says the priest Uładzimiér Kaminski from Lida, a town near the Lithuanian border.

"These people see themselves as part of the elite. They feel inviolable."

At the same time, there are individual clergy who have sided with the peaceful demonstrators since the protests began after the rigged elections on August 9th.

Like Alexander Shramko, once a priest in the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Minsk.

Because he criticized the Moscow Patriarch Kirill, he was banned from writing in 2017.

A year later he was also removed from all offices.

"The church assumes that it is above politics," says Shramko.

However, given the highly tense situation in Belarus, any reluctance would be harmful, "because the mighty are violating God's laws".

If the government is fraudulent and violent against its citizens, "the church must stand up, take a stand and demand a dialogue".

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Protesting women formed a human chain in front of the Catholic "Church of St. Simon and St. Helena" in Minsk

Photo: VASILY FEDOSENKO / REUTERS

However, it is far from that.

The majority of Orthodox leaders remain silent in the face of the ongoing protests.

Anyone who expresses themselves critical on the Internet or in public quickly comes into contact with the security authorities, is monitored or approached directly.

A priest reported to SPIEGEL that he was pressured to delete unpopular posts on Facebook.

From government officials - but also from his direct church superior.

On August 22nd, at a mass event in Grodno, autocrat Alexander Lukashenko made it clear that clergymen of all denominations had to stay out of politics - an unequivocal warning, as it turned out.

A few days later, the Belarusian metropolitan Pavel Ponomarev suddenly resigned.

He had visited victims of violence and torture in the hospital, which was apparently interpreted as a show of solidarity.

The shot priest Shramko is certain that Moscow made this decision "to keep Lukashenko's back free".

In fact, the newly installed Metropolitan Benjamin has so far been tame - he formulates vaguely and cannot be pinned to one position in the ongoing conflict.

"Comfortably furnished in the autocratic regime"

But does Lukashenko, who was surprisingly sworn in as head of state on Tuesday, even have to fear that the clergy will overflow with the reformers?

Hardly likely.

According to official figures, around 48 percent of Belarusians are Orthodox, but by no means all of them go to church regularly.

"Belarusian society is secular," says Shramko.

"Many demonstrators are atheists, the influence of the churches on the masses is manageable."

Nevertheless, the Orthodox Church has enjoyed the greatest trust of all social actors for years, says Natallia Vasilevich, head of the "Ecumenical Center" association and the "Christian Vision" group at the opposition coordination council.

That could change if the official church leadership insists on maintaining their pseudo-neutrality.

"She has established herself comfortably in the autocratic regime, which has granted her symbolic but also tangible economic privileges," said Vasilevich.

But nobody can escape the rapid changes in Belarus at the moment.

"The church can no longer remain silent or hide. It has to react."

The government is also targeting Catholics

The autocrat Lukashenko, who likes to pretend, relies on total control in the tried and tested way.

The Catholic Church - the second largest denomination in the country with a million believers - has already come under fire.

The chairman of the Bishops' Conference, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, was not allowed to return to Belarus after a visit to Poland.

The Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Yuri Kasabuzki was targeted by the authorities after explicitly denouncing violence and arrests from the pulpit and accusing the regime of election fraud.

In an interview with "Nascha Niwa" he said that his church should be put under pressure.

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Catholic believers pray in the "Church of St. Simon and St. Helena" in Minsk.

Dozens had fled to the house of worship on August 26 and were locked up there by Omon forces.

Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz strongly condemned the action. 

Photo: Misha Friedman / Getty Images

Rome reacted - diplomatically.

Pope Francis called for dialogue and a renunciation of violence in Belarus and sent his Foreign Minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, to Minsk.

Neither of the two formulated open criticism.

The Catholic and Orthodox Churches are currently doing just as badly as the European Union, which has still not managed to impose sanctions on the autocrat Lukashenko because of the Cypriot veto.

"It is our duty to denounce violence," says Georgi Roy, a priest in the Orthodox cathedral in Grodno in the west of the country.

It is here, not far from the border with Poland and Lithuania, that Lukashenko wants to close the borders while the army is on alert.

The church bells rang in Grodno when riots against demonstrators recently broke out - as a warning to the security forces to stop the violence.

Georgi Roy did not attend the meetings, but he did visit the local prison, distributed water and fruits, tried to comfort and educate the families of the detainees.

"The violence against one's own people is experienced as a collective trauma that connects," says Roy.

"Belarusians are peace-loving people who can handle anything - but not this humanitarian catastrophe. That is our greatest pain."

What the revolution needs

Lukashenko's security apparatus has done a great job so far: the most important reformers are either in exile or in prison, and demonstrators can expect to be arrested any minute.

Many opponents of the regime fear dismissal and unemployment, the loss of their livelihood.

"The opposition in Belarus has no structure", complained the former leader of the Polish trade union movement Solidarność, Lech Walesa, in the "taz".

A revolution needs "trustworthy experts at key points in the state, a realistic program and perseverance".

Walesa knows only too well that revolutions also cost money.

In the case of Solidarność, support came from the Vatican, among others, where Pope John Paul II, who came from Poland, wanted to put an end to communism in his home country with millions in aid.

As is well known, the investment has paid off.

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2020-09-25

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